It has the style but lacks the substance needed to truly draw you into the experience. The story itself is a unique one and framing around a detective noir aesthetic should be excellent staring ingredients - unfortunately what's added are puzzles which don't particularly compliment the tale being woven that go on for just a tick too long and pacing that, while generally fine, can feel glacial at points.

I can forgive those things somewhat though when you're provided with Genesis Noir's spectacle - certain sections have an almost transcendental quality that can put a smile on your face.

Through sheer iteration, F1 is better than it's ever been in video game form - a shame then that the much vaunted and marketed story mode is complete and utter tosh.

I don't fault the game for having a set story it wants to tell, but it constantly allows you to break the believability of what you're being told by what it lets you do on track. It would also help if the story itself was interesting or believable in any capacity - if you have anything more than a surface level understanding of the sport it just seems ridiculous at points.

But it's still one of the best racing games out there and great fun in the usual career or multiplayer modes, and one that's surprisingly easy for newcomers to get into despite how complicated the sport can be.

It's more Darkside Detective but better in almost every way.

Each case feels more fleshed out with more interesting puzzles and mini-games, and while the pixelwork in the first game wasn't exactly shabby there's a notable uptick in quality on display. The writing and dialogue is still very funny and doesn't rely as much on pop culture references as its predecessor, allowing the game to have more of its own identity and its characters to stand out a bit more.

The best improvement though is probably one of the more subtle changes. McQueen and Dooley's were very much of the straight man/wacky sidekick archetype in the first game and while this is still prevalent in the sequel, you now feel like there's relationship between them outside of being stock character types. They actually feel more like friends this time round who care about each other and their wellbeing, who just also happen to be silly people in a silly town as well. As I said, it's a very slight change but it's very welcome and adds an extra decimal point of dimension to this 2D adventure.

I do think I'd struggle a little if it were my first foray into the series - it references a lot of previous characters and events which is sometimes fine but happens so often that you could be left feeling a touch lost at times - but seeing as this isn't my first trip to the Darkside this wasn't an issue for me.

Final Fantasy XV is not a bad game, but it is supremely frustrating at almost every level. It has flashes of brilliance but there's so much untapped potential.

Obviously FFXV didn't have the easiest development history a game has ever had, but it's noticeable how incomplete so many aspects feel. While it generally does a good job with its four main protagonists and villain, there are so many side characters that are either terrible (in design and/or writing) or severely underused - in fact, some just go missing completely despite being introduced as a major player.

The story itself is fine in concept but is held back by a number of issues - not least vanishing or underused characters that are meant to be important to the story - but also by an infuriating amount of time skips that seem to jump over important plot or character developments. This is most evident at around the point the game switches from open world to a more linear progression where characters experience a big event, and then a number of weeks pass and some have completely changed their demeanor and personality. The best utilised time skip comes towards the end of the game, but at that point you're a bit too close to the end to see the ramifications of it (not that you can, as the rest of the world is gated off almost completely at that point)

It also doesn't help that a lot of the interesting stuff that happens is completely off-screen, and you only find out about events through radio broadcasts and newspapers. Story events happening off screen are fine in isolation, but it's a regular occurrence in this game. Even worse is that some major developments occur to some of your main protagonists which are saved for DLC or just not elaborated on at all - especially infuriating is that one of these DLCs would have fit really well in the main game.

I have other quibbles about awful level gating (it's supremely easy to be overlevelled very quickly), combat that's purely functional rather than interesting and those awful, awful outfits for Cindy and Aranea, but the most annoying part of it all is that there was so much potential for this to be a great game. It needed a lot more time in the oven but I think Square Enix lost patience and the game director (Tabata) only had so much he could salvage. It does have its moments - the Altissia and ending sequences are very strong, Ardyn is a very intriguing character and the soundtrack is another fantastic Shimomura composition - but while I didn't dislike the time I spent with the game it's hard not to feel disappointed at what could have been.

After half an hour I was very close to putting this down - ruining people's day seemed fun at first but was getting a little bit old quickly, and I was getting a little tired with some of the meme humour. Thankfully that mostly changed once I hit the first non-conventional level and realised that Rain on Your Parade was basically What the Golf?! but with a cloud.

There was still some meme humour to deal with (and very outdated meme humour at that - we have an Antonie Dodson reference in here) but everything else became more quirky and charming as you receive more cloud abilities, and with fun ideas for levels cropping up and then being thrown out just as quickly to not overstay their welcome.

All that and not a single rubbish cloud-wifi joke in sight. Kudos.